I discovered Beardie during a road trip from California to the East Coast. While passing through New Mexico, the Dame and I wandered into a ramshackle antique store off the highway, the kind of roadside dive that smelled of diesel and mortality.

Beardie spent most of the next day in bed, sleeping off his hangover and the bad gastronomical memories of Mexico. Poor fella was so feverish that he had some pretty intense nightmares. Everybody on our floor could hear him yelling in his sleep. “Stay away from me,” he screamed, “or I’ll carve my initials in your belly with a dull butter knife!!”

Beardie traveled to New York by train, because he won’t step foot on a plane anymore. “They’re lousy with al-Qaeda operatives,” he told us. “Hiding in the bathrooms, peering at you from the complimentary peanuts, bogarting the emergency exit seats. And they’re all armed to the teeth with box cutters and shampoo bottles bigger than three ounces.”